Is it reasonable to expect a company to update drivers for a new operating system if an all-in-one printer is only four years old? We'd think so, but HP is having none of this for their Officejet 6110. When Matt asked HP for updated drivers for OS X Leopard, HP told him that printing will still work, but scanning was out of the question (unless he previously updated from a 10.3 or 10.4 system with the scanning software already installed). HP did say that he could trade in his printer for $16, which actually isn't all that bad for a four-year-old model.

But here's the problem. Printers don't get outdated nearly as fast as computers, and as long as it's still working, you expect it to still be supported within a reasonable time frame. Four years is reasonable. HP's updated this particular model number for Vista, which is actually also a problem since many users have cited printer driver compatibility as a reason why they don't want to update to Vista.

In Matt's case, there are some open source drivers and scanning suites available so he can get scanning to work under Leopard. It may require a bit of trial and error, since open source drivers/suites aren't exactly as install-and-forget as the official ones, but it beats having to buy a new printer. [Consumierst]